Surely, there must be more than luck involved in being in the right place at the right time throughout one’s life.

Surely, there’s got to be more to it than that.

Steve Kerr takes the reins of the Suns starting today in part because he once was a star player at the University of Arizona, coached by Lute Olson, whose daughter once dated a business student named Robert Sarver.

Sarver, a couple of decades and several savvy business deals later, picked Kerr to be his basketball adviser when Sarver decided to buy the Suns three years ago.

Of course, Kerr always seems to be favorably situated.

Back in the summer of 1983, Olson had Kerr and his high school coach in Los Angeles arrange a pickup game so he could give Kerr a look.

Olson had seen Kerr play before in a summer league; he wanted to check him out again to decide whether he’d give him Arizona’s last remaining scholarship.

About the only other school to show much interest was Gonzaga. But a rising player there named John Stockton had all but wiped the floor with Kerr during a workout.

So Olson and his wife watched from the sideline.

“What do you think?” Lute asked Bobbi as they walked out.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Bobbi said.

Olson had just moved to Arizona from Iowa, “And she was used to the athletes we had there,” Olson said today.

To be sure, Kerr wasn’t particularly big, strong or fast. But he could shoot the lights out, and he could pass.

So Olson begged to disagree with his wife, saying, “He did everything you need from a guard, and he was a leader.”

At Arizona, Kerr became an impact player immediately.

He also became perhaps the most popular athlete ever in Tucson, as fans adopted him after his father, Malcolm, the president of American University in Lebanon, was assassinated in the middle of Kerr’s freshman season.

He eventually helped lead the Wildcats to the Final Four in 1988.

Much later, his uniform number would be retired. At the ceremony, he turned to Bobbi and said, tongue in cheek, “Mrs. O, thanks for your confidence in my ability.”

Kerr was drafted as a courtesy by his home-state NBA team in 1988 because the Suns had a spare second-round pick and wanted to let him get a foot in the league’s door.

Right place, right time.

He spent much of the year on the bench, or — worse — on the injured list with imaginary maladies because the Suns didn’t have room for him on the active roster.

But during one game, he gave a glimpse that he might stick in the league. He was thrown into a close game down the stretch and drew a foul.

“It was a very tough situation,” said Paul Westphal, then a Suns assistant coach. “But he knocked down both free throws, right down the middle.

“He had the poise and the skill. That’s impressive for a rookie.”

Kerr showed enough to become a deep reserve NBA vagabond with Cleveland and Orlando, “a lost bench player” as coach Phil Jackson described him, before he landed with Jackson’s Chicago Bulls.

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Right enough that Kerr developed a 3-point game that would become — and still stands — as the NBA’s best ever (45.4 percent).

But there were bumps.

Jackson recalls a game vs. Milwaukee when Kerr missed a potential game-winner and had an off game in general.

So Kerr worked with a shooting coach until such performances were rare.

Then the Bulls broke up, so it was on to San Antonio, where the Spurs had a great low-post game that gave Kerr more open shots.

Right place, right time.

There, he helped the Spurs win two titles as a key reserve and strong locker-room presence.

“When something needed to be said, he would be willing to say it … in a humble, sincere, what’s-good-for-theteam tone,” said Danny Ferry, a Spurs teammate.

This is a big reason Ferry, who now runs the Cleveland Cavaliers’ basketball operations, thinks Kerr “will do extremely well” with the Suns.

“He has good, clean opinions, the ability to communicate them and the willingness to do it honestly,” Ferry said. “Those are huge attributes.”

Olson thinks Kerr has a knack for judging players and people.

“Bad people can ruin an organization,” he said. “He knows the importance of character.”

All these influences along the way have settled in.

From Olson, Kerr said he learned about “the cumulative results of grinding away each day” as well as “how to handle yourself publicly” in a big-time sport.

In short order, he became a favorite of fans, reporters, teammates and everyone else.

“He’s very smart, witty … self-deprecating, easy to get along with,” said Wildcats teammate Matt Muehlebach, now a Tucson lawyer. “He made everyone feel part of the team.”

From Jackson, he learned about how to blend disparate personalities — this is a team that had superstars Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and the eccentric, publicity-seeking Dennis Rodman — into a working group that showed camaraderie and poise.

He also learned that it’s OK to “think out of the box.”

Until meeting Jackson, “I’d never meditated before. You’re expecting the joke to be on you … that you open your eyes and everyone is laughing at you.

“Then you realize he’s serious.”

For his part, Jackson discovered a gritty toughness to Kerr.

One day, while Jackson found himself stuck in his office in a teleconference with the nation’s basketball media, Kerr and Jordan got into an argument during a scrimmage.

It seemed the two had differing ideas on ball movement (with Kerr apparently more in favor of the concept).

Jackson heard about it, and by the time he arrived, “Michael was getting dressed. He was embarrassed by it … Steve was angered by it.”

And yet, “the relationship built,” Jackson said. By the time the playoffs rolled around, “Michael was feeding Steve for game-winning shots.”

His Airness even fed Kerr’s ego during tough times.

During the 1997 NBA Finals, Kerr’s shot was off-target as the Bulls were struggling to put away the Utah Jazz. On the team flight from Salt Lake City to Chicago, Jackson recalls, “I told Michael, ‘Make sure you give Steve a pat on the back. He needs some support.’”

Now, Jordan wasn’t really a pat-on-the-back sort of guy.

“Michael would say, ‘Buck up, buddy,’” Jackson said. “He demanded people stand up.”

Evidently, Jordan took Jackson’s advice. And in the next game, Kerr managed to hit a key shot to help wrap up the Finals.

He hit the shot over Stockton, the same guy who’d embarrassed him back at that long-ago workout at Gonzaga.

“It was sweet justice,” Jackson said.

In addition to his submerged toughness, “It seemed he had his pulse on everything,” Muehlebach recalled from their days in Tucson. “He was very observant.

“It seemed he was able to get everything; he was able to think things through.”

This is true enough.

Now it can be revealed that Kerr even was able to think through that eventful pickup game back in ’83.

Olson found out relatively recently that, “His buddies made sure he looked good … They made sure he got open shots.”

And, of course, he hit those shots.

So with this as a backdrop, Kerr today takes over the leadership of a team that seems oh-so-close to a title in large part because of timely, opportune connections.

Right place, right time again?

COPYRIGHT 2007, EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE. Used with permission.